


There are Worse Things I Could Do

by lilaestheticsnhope



Series: Grease Songfics [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 11:50:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12887247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilaestheticsnhope/pseuds/lilaestheticsnhope
Summary: Y/N and Steve haven't really talked since he started dating Nancy, despite being childhood friends. To cope with the loss of her best friend Y/N started to fill the void with one-night stands and parties. When the two meet at a party months after Nancy and Steve's breakup they have a much-needed talk.





	1. Meeting Again

I’m sure whatever this guy was saying to me was supposed to be impressive. I made the proper facial expressions to fit that scenario, but I wasn’t listening, not even a little bit. I can’t decide if I want to settle for this one tonight, or if I want to go back to the guy on the team. However, the jock was kind of funny looking, and I wasn’t particularly interested in him either. This guy was handsome, as far as guys in Hawkins go. I heard from a friend that he was a good lay.Not a good friend, just one who knew the difference between good and bad sex. I didn’t have a good friend anymore. My good friend got a girlfriend last year and hasn’t talked to me since. My good friend decided to show up at this party after months of being a recluse when said girlfriend dumped. I’m not nearly drunk enough to sleep with this guy if I’m still thinking about that good friend. 

“I’m gonna get another drink, but stay right here I’ll be right back,” I assured, touching his arm, giving him a coy smile. Parties were all the same. There was some mystery configuration of alcohol and juice in a punch bowl that was quickly loosening me up. I wouldn’t be satisfied until the sap waiting for me looked a little more like John Stamos and a little less like… well himself. 

By the time I came back to him or at least someone who kind of looked like him, or maybe just a different guy entirely my speech was slightly slurred. 

“Oh, that’s so cool. I couldn’t imagine doing anything like that,” I replied to his incessant bragging. 

“Yeah, I just took a look at the engine and-”

“You wanna get outta here. I wanna see what else your hands are good at.” 

“Oh yeah, I…” he trailed off, looking affronted and red in the face. 

“What, you don’t know if you can rev up this Harley?” I taunted, smiling the smile that always got men to take me home. I’d get what I wanted and be back out by morning. He pulled me close to him by my waist lead me out of the crowded party. If I’m quite honest my head was spinning, but it was the good kind of spin, the kind of spin that didn’t let you think. I couldn’t think about why I was doing this; I couldn’t think about the year of doing this.

“Y/N.” someone called my name and I turned to see who. I’m not sure why I turned, it’s not like anyone called my name for good reasons anymore. That being said, it wasn’t called for a good reason now.

“What are you doing?” the person demanded to know, and someone grabbed my wrist. I looked down at my wrist first then followed the hand grasping it up to an arm, then to a   
shoulder, a neck, and a face I’d know anywhere no matter what. 

“Steve,” I said out loud, mostly to myself. I also kind of expected him to confirm my conclusion too. 

“Y/N, you’re drunk,” he sighed. 

“Stop clam jamming me,” I whined, weakly slapping his hand. 

“My god. I’m not letting you go off with this guy.” 

“Hey, man! She wants to come with me,” the guy… I think his name was Brody, or it was Brad. I narrowed my eyes at him to try and figure out exactly who he was. Whatever his name is, he stepped chest to chest with Steve. Steve! Steve was my best friend. 

“No, she doesn’t know what she wants. Go away, Brent.” 

Brent! That was his name! Wait, ew I was gonna go home with Brent. Jeesh I gotta stop drinking.“I’m going with Steve now,” I announced and pushed Brent’s hands away from me. In my efforts I fell forward, destined to kiss the porch but Steve caught me and my face crashed into his chest instead. He didn’t have a soft chest. 

“Ow,” I slurred.

“I’m taking you to my place,” he sighed. 

“Your parents…”

“Not home. We both know your mom will kill us both if I take you to your place.” 

“She’s a great shot,” I giggled, imagining my mother in her rollers pulling a gun from her bra to shoot at us. The thought provoked a belly laugh so strong I could barely stand. I leaned heavily on Steve for support. He sighed and he picked me up. 

“Look at Mr. Universe over here,” I mocked. Then I shut my eyes, just for a tiny rest. 

I woke up early in someone else’s bed, so I started the routine. I got up found my dress then started looking for paper. I found a notebook and pen then wrote the usual note: 

Thanks for a great night. See you around  
XOXO 

It was the same every time, even if I didn’t remember the night, though I usually remembered the sex. I didn’t remember it this time. I guessed that I just had too much to drink. I made a silent promise not to drink that much again as I slid on my shoes. My eyes were barely open. The morning light woke me and I still felt a little drunk. I opened the room door, navigated the hallways into a familiar front room, though with my eyes half closed I couldn’t quite discern why it was familiar. I figured it was because I was just there last night. There was a shirt draped over the couch and I thought perhaps the action started out here. I paused trying to remember who I went home with, and when I couldn’t remember that, I tried again to remember the sex. Alas, there was nothing, just a black, blank slate. 

“You’re up.” 

I whirled around, not just because I’d been caught trying to leave before my guy of the night noticed, but because I knew that voice. I’d know it anywhere, no matter what. “Steve?!” I went home with Steve?! How much did I drink? Even drunk me had boundaries, and I always thought Steve had boundaries too. I didn’t think he’d sleep with me at all, let alone while I was drunk off my ass. 

“I know that look, and no,” he rolled his eyes, “I slept on the couch,” he gestured to the couch, with the shirt draped over it. Of course, the living room was familiar. I spent most of my childhood playing in it. 

“I’ve got to stop drinking,” I murmured to myself, wiping the sleep from my eyes. 

“Yeah you do,” he held up a sheet of notebook paper with my note on it, “you really thought we slept together.” 

I scoffed at the note, “I woke up in someone else’s bed. It’s just the routine, Steve.” 

He shook his head, “I made breakfast, come on, you need it.” He turned, trudging away from me, his pajama pants hanging low on his hips; he was shirtless. I missed him. This was the way I had to reunite with him. A year of not talking to each other and this was how we reunited. It’s not even like he particularly wanted me here. I looked at the living room remembering how big it looked to me when I was little. It was a vast jungle, teeming with imaginary destinations and a boy with big messy hair.

“No thanks, drive me home,” I sighed heading for the door. Staying here hurt. There were memories attached to every nook and cranny of this place. 

“Come have breakfast,” he yelled back from the kitchen, in a tone of voice that had haunted my adolescence. It was his ‘no-nonsense’ voice. The one he used when I was being unreasonable, I’ll admit he uses that tone of voice with me often. When I’d yell at him for not letting me have my way when we were little. He would say my name in that exact tone. It always made me give in. I gave in now because I was hungry and Steve could make a mean stack of pancakes. I trudged like a scorned toddler to the kitchen and flopped into a chair at the kitchen table. If he didn’t know how upset I was with the situation then what was the point, you know?   
It’s not like he was trying to hide how upset he was with me. He was carelessly tossing dishes in the sink and slamming cabinets. That was his passive-aggressive way of expressing his anger. He got it from his mother. I couldn’t fathom why he was mad. Anger meant he cared and in our year apart he made it abundantly clear that he didn’t. He was the King of not caring. Perhaps that all changed with Nancy. So much changed when he met Nancy. 

“I didn’t think you liked parties anymore, Harrington,” I prodded.

He inhaled sharply putting pancakes on a plate, “It’s not that I don’t like them, just didn’t see the point of going to them.” 

“What made you go to last night’s party?” 

“Don’t know,” he shrugged. I looked at the expanse of his back that was littered with freckles. My eyes wandered down looking at how puberty continued to change him over the last year. I’d seen him shirtless before he was a fit basketball player and his boyhood chub still clung to him. Those summer days in his pool, laughing and playing without a care in the world. His parents would sit by the pool and sunbathe, mine would toss us into the water and play shark attack. What happened to us? Tears pricked at my waterline. I know what happened to us. He set the plate of pancakes in front of me. 

“Hoping to get lucky?” Bitterness clung to every syllable. I picked up the syrup on the table and started drenching my pancakes in it. Steve stopped being lucky at parties after Nancy. Steve stopped liking parties after Nancy. He stopped liking a lot of things after Nancy. 

“Nope. Just figured I’d get out. I’m glad I was there though. I mean really, Brent?” He glanced back at me as he turned on the faucet.  
I frowned at him confusedly. Before I could ask what exactly he meant, it all came flooding back to me, “I didn’t know it was Brent until you said it.” 

“Really?!” He whirled around to look at me. 

“I was drunk.” 

‘You were that drunk? You couldn’t tell that you were going home with the biggest creep on the basketball team.” 

“Well, obviously I was. What do you want me to do? Lie to you?”

“No, I want you to make better decisions. What if I wasn’t there?” he sounded tired. He turned back around towards the plate of pancakes on the counter that I guessed were for him. 

“Then I guess I’d be walking home from Brent’s,” I answered cutting out a square from the stack of pancakes, stabbing it with my fork, and popping it into my mouth. 

“You’re a fucking mess, you know?” he shook his head, wild hair moving with him. I snorted; of course, I knew. How could I not? I live with myself 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Of course, I was well aware that my life was a shit-show. Yes, I knew that this binge drinking and serial fucking weren't good for me but god dammit it was fun. It was always fun until the morning, and I had been doing it for a year. I stopped to wonder if that made me an alcoholic. 

“I mean we haven’t talked in- in months. I only hear about you through rumors, and then when I finally see you, you’re at a party drunk off your ass!”

“Yeah well, things change in a couple of months.” He should know all about change. He’d changed the most. I won’t lie and say it wasn’t for the better, but to me, he was the guy I always knew just minus talking to me at all. That was the most painful change. 

“No! This isn’t like you. You would never-”

“Well, you don’t know what’s like me and what’s not anymore. That was the old me who stayed at home wasting her life away.” 

“I liked the old you.” 

“I bet you did,” I grumbled to low for him to hear. 

“Do you remember when you got here last night?”

I looked up to see that Steve was still standing by the counter. His back was to me and his head was hung low as he held the counter with both hands. 

“We’ve already been over this. I was drunk, I don’t remember much.” 

“You told me I broke your heart,” he mumbled. 

Then I remembered. Steve carried me into the house, I was too drunk to walk properly up the stairs. He set me down on his bed. I remembered pulling off my dress and tossing it across the room. It was the routine, the routine for all beds mine or otherwise. I remembered looking up at him the way I look at all the other boys, never the way I looked at my best friend. 

“Steve, come here.” 

“No, go to bed.” 

“Don’t you want me?” I asked letting my head lull to one side as I smiled that smile that stole men’s hearts. It made them feel like they were taking my innocence as their own. It was a sick game they played but if it got me a moment of what I wanted then I was content playing with them. He didn’t take the bait, he looked down at me in my underwear and shook his head, his face more annoyed than anything else.

“Good night.” He began to walk away and I felt the ghost of the pain I felt when I first saw him with Nancy. After a whole summer of being together the way we always were, of getting a taste of what I wanted us to be only to have it torn away, he was giving my favorite smile away to another girl. 

“Never any time for me, Harrington. Never anytime, but always time to break my heart.” I couldn’t help but remember the scorn, the way it had hurt so badly I could barely breathe the first time he ditched me for Nancy. He never called to tell me he wasn’t coming to our weekly movie nights, he left me waiting for him on Saturday night’s, waiting despite the fact that he would never be there.

“What?”

“Thought you’d make the time to fuck me at the very least. That’s what boys do right? But no time for that... still enough time to break my heart! You keep doing that. I keep letting you do that!” 

I wanted to stab myself in the neck with my fork. I have to stop drinking. 

“I was drunk,” I said for what felt like the fiftieth time this morning. It wasn’t an excuse this time, it was an explanation. It was why I said what I did, not why he shouldn’t listen. 

“Drunk people tell the truth,” his voice was low, hurt. He was hurt. 

“Yeah well, drunk people say things they don’t mean to say.” 

“So I broke your heart,” he whirled around to glare at me, his mouth set in an angry scowl. 

“I don’t wanna talk about it.” I huffed dropping the fork and standing up, “I wanna go home.”

“No, we’re going to talk about this-”

“I want to go home!”

“I want to know how I broke your heart! How did I break your heart huh? You seemed fine to me. You were fine enough to run off with Tommy the moment he and Carol broke up. Fine enough to run off with any guy that gives you half a second of attention-”

I stood so quickly I flipped my chair over,“Don’t bring Tommy into this, okay. I went through enough with him. I don’t need you throwing that back in my face. And well maybe it was a nice change to have someone talk to me, you ever think about that?! Even if it wasn’t genuine. At least it was something.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“It means, after being forgotten by your childhood best friend maybe it feels good to have someone pay you a little attention!”

“Don’t turn this around on me!”

“Well, what did you want me to do?! Just wait quietly on the sidelines while you played house with Nancy? Because obviously, you couldn’t talk to both of us.”

“It wasn’t like that-”

“Yes, it was! You started dating her and all of a sudden you wanted nothing to do with me. A year, Steve! A year of seeing my best friend in the hall and having him just pass me by like I didn’t even exist. You were so far up Nancy’s ass that you forgot I even existed! You were having the time of your fucking life Steve, so excuse me if I went out and had a little fun of my own while you started making a whole new life without me. Couldn’t even take out the time to answer my calls after Tommy, and I needed you but you were out planning a picket fence life with Nancy.” 

“That’s not true!”

“Then what’s the truth?”

“I told you not to date Tommy, and you did it anyway. Did you think about how that would make me feel? I thought after that summer that my opinion at least meant something, anything to you. I thought maybe we’d be something then you started dating someone else.”

“Me! You never touched me again after that and you started chasing after Nancy! Was I supposed to stay readily available for whenever you felt inclined to give me the time of day?”

“No, but I was just… I was mad! I was angry that you were after Tommy when all I wanted was you. I mean I wanted Nancy but only because-”

“That’s why you stopped talking to me?! You could have talked to me, god knows I tried to talk to you. I loved you too, you know. When you started dating Nancy, I kept it to myself because I figured maybe summer didn’t mean anything. I still wanted you though, in whatever way I could have you, but most importantly I still wanted my friend. And-and I thought maybe after Nancy when you came to my room and cried for hours and I stayed up all night with you that we were back, that whatever feelings you had because of Nancy about me were gone. All I wanted was my friend, but no. You didn’t want me. So I’m sorry that I dated Tommy, and I’m sorry that you saw me last night and felt like you had to act like a friend for one night!”

“It’s more than just Tommy okay!”

“But it would have stopped after Tommy! If you just answered my call. When I needed to talk to you after the things he did. Did you hear that about me? Did you hear from the boys what Tommy did?” I taunted as confusion shone in my eyes. He didn’t know what kickstarted my year of spiraling.

“I told you not to date Tommy, so don’t-”

“Don’t what? Ask you to be there when I realized I fucked up,” I interrupted his last-ditch attempt to place all the blame on me, “Steve, there are worse things I could do than go with some guys, okay? I could lead them on, pretend I was into them. I could spend a whole summer with them having sleepovers. I could talk to them about making a life and a future with them then just refuse to see any of it through. Or. Or! I could stay home every night for months, not talk to a soul, shut everyone out and just dream about a future with someone who doesn’t want me, who never loved me, who said it was all bullshit! I could throw my life away on a dream that won’t come true. I could hurt someone like me out of spite or jealousy. I could know my friend was dating someone who would hurt them and I could just leave them all alone to deal with it. I could choose someone over my best friend despite the fact that no one ever made me choose! I don’t lie, and I don’t steal, but I can feel and I can cry a fact I guess never occurred to you,” I yelled at the top of my lungs jabbing my finger at him. His eyes were swimming and red-tinged. I felt my fire die down, and it was replaced by a year of unreleased sorrow. When I spoke again it was just loud enough for him to hear to keep my voice from trembling, “The worst thing I’ll ever do is cry in front of you.” Hot tears rolled down my face, tears that were usually reserved for my pillow where they would soak in and never be seen by the likes of Steve Harrington. I covered my face so he wouldn’t see me anymore, but I still sniffled and hiccupped. Consequently, I didn’t see him cross the kitchen to pull me into a hug. I didn’t resist his embrace, even if it meant I was getting tears all over his chest because it’s what I’d wanted most for all this time. 

“Hey, Y/N, come on, stop crying, please,” He pleaded, swaying in place as if he were rocking me like a baby. 

“I needed you. I needed you to be there, just as my friend if you couldn’t love me too. It was fine that you weren’t in love with me. I just needed you to be my friend,” I cried. He shushed me, smoothing my hair down in the back. He led me out of the kitchen and to the sofa where we sat and he held me longer. 

When my tears dried up he didn’t stop holding me. I didn’t want him to stop holding me. It felt like a sad parody of the way he held me that day. It was the summer of ‘83. Before he started dating Nancy Wheeler, and before I started dating Tommy. We went on a road trip to his parent’s lakehouse. It felt so right to be with him then, just laughing the way we used to without his asshole friends. Of course, I thought Tommy and Carol were assholes, I never even hung out with them if I could help it. I only hung out with Steve when they weren’t there because he was a different person with them, a person I didn’t know. At that lakehouse, we’d shifted away from being just friends. Touches lasted too long, and we talked about things that friends didn’t talk about. I could still hear the words he said to me the night I realized I was in love with my best friend. 

“Remember when we said we’d marry each other when we were little,” he asked. 

“I do. We were supposed to do that at sixteen though. I think we’re a little late.” 

“I’ve always been shit with deadlines. Can we still do it now?”

“I want a ring, Harrington,” I joked back, knowing he couldn’t possibly be serious. We walked the length of the lake together, walking hand in hand under the pretense of ensuring that I wouldn’t fall.

“I always figured we'd live in a place like the lakehouse, you know? Some place quiet, away from the rest of the world. I always imagined baking our favorite cookies together,” he continued, no hint of a joke in his tone, “Whenever I imagined a future for myself, you’re always in it.” 

“See I always thought we’d run away together, away from Hawkins and our parents and go elope in some big city.” 

“I’d like that,” he stopped walking and I did too, looking up at him curiously. He looked down at me and I still don’t know what that look meant. No one had ever looked at me that way. It was similar to the way my mom would look at me as she told me I was the best thing to ever happen to her, or how my dad would look at me when I gave him my homemade gifts. It was a look like love but not, because it was different than the way mom and dad looked at me in a very fundamental way. I just couldn’t pinpoint in what way. That look gave me butterflies, and that was entirely new to me. 

“We could have a house with a dog,” I offered. 

“And kids and we would always be there for them. We wouldn’t skip out every other week,” he frowned. I reached up and pressed my palm tenderly against his cheek. 

“Hey,” I spoke in the voice I only used when Steve was hurting. I’d cultivated it when I was a child, seeing him cry on parent’s days when his didn’t show up. It made him stop thinking about the pain and look at me. 

“I think we’d be the coolest parents,” I continued smiling. Then he did something that changed everything. He pressed his lips to mine and took my first kiss. He had to know it was my first kiss, or maybe he just didn’t think about it in the moment. Doesn’t matter because it was, and it made me feel like a live wire. It was addictive, one kiss wasn’t enough and I went from kissing for the first time to frenching for the first time. There were a lot of firsts that night. Lying in bed with Steve I thought we were done dancing around each other, that we would finally be together. Then his parents called, they were furious about one thing or another and we had to go back to town immediately. We never reconciled anything that happened or talked about it ever again. The moment we hit the town limits Steve just started treating me like his friend again, but it was wrong, like when you take a sticker off its paper and try to put it back. It’s never quite right. We were never quite right. School started and so did his fascination with Nancy. I didn’t start dating Tommy until after they stopped being friends. Part of me wanted to get back at him for leaving me behind the way he did. Tommy also had a thing for me and it felt nice to have someone fawn over me, even if it only lasted until he got what he wanted. 

As if he could detect the direction of my thoughts, Steve asked, “What happened with Tommy?”

I wanted to throw a snide remark at him, ask him why he suddenly cared about what happened with Tommy. He certainly hadn’t cared when it mattered. I quelled my petty anger. He cared now, and I wanted to tell him about it. 

“He said what he needed to to get in my pants, then he hooked back up with Carol.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He was only the second guy I ever… it hurt a lot. Called me some very hurtful things on his way out of my life and for a while, I believed him. I mean I figured my childhood friend left me behind too so maybe he was on to something. Of course, the first thing I thought about was how you told me not to date him, it was the last thing you ever said to me. I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.” 

He kissed the top of my head and I was reminded of the morning after our night together. He’d held me just like this, leaning against the headboard, and he kissed the top of my head. 

“Can we talk… about that night?” Steve asked, reading my mind once again. 

“What’s there to talk about? We fucked.”

“Don’t call it that.” I looked up at him to see the way his nose crinkled in disgust. 

“Fucking? That’s what happened.” 

“It meant something to me.” 

“Sure had a funny way of showing it,” I grumbled, my bitterness leaking into my voice again.

“You never tried to talk to me about it either,” he pointed out, and he was right. We both dropped the ball. 

“...it meant something to me too,” I admitted. 

“I got scared.” It seemed like that was hard for him to say. I suppose it would be. Steve spent most of his life making himself be strong. Admitting fear was admitting defeat in a very intimate way. 

“Of what?”

“How, intensely I felt about you. How right it all felt with you that week we were away. It felt like things were, I dunno moving, maybe falling into place too quickly and I didn’t know what to do about it.” 

“I guess… I thought maybe you just didn’t want me like that after you know we did it. Figured it wasn’t any good…So I thought we’d just go back to being friends, never talk about… but we didn’t.”

“Ah fuck, I’m sorry.” 

I only shrugged, there was no use in making him feel any worse about it. He seemed miserable enough. He also looked like he had more to say, so I waited for him to say it. 

“That was your… your first-”

“Yeah,” I sighed, sitting up and distancing myself from him. He grabbed my hand though, trying to keep me close without holding me in place. 

“I shouldn’t have done that to you,” he used that tone of voice again, that no-nonsense tone. It let me know that he understood. He knew how bad that was. 

“I should have kept trying… bruised ego or not. It was important not just for us but for me.Maybe it would have saved me some heartbreak.”

“I don’t want you to leave and never come back. I missed you.”

“I missed you too… but-”

“Come on, let me at least try to make this up to you.”

“Alright,” I agreed, thinking back on summers before our big split when we were carefree, a dynamic duo riding through Indiana. Maybe we could have that again. It wouldn’t be the same. It would never be the same, but maybe it could be different in a good way.


	2. Epilogue

“Harrington, I will kill you in your fucking sleep,” I threatened in a dangerously low voice.

“Jokes on you, Y/N. I’m living to be 100 and when I do die it’ll be in Chicago on the coldest day of the year,” he prophesied. I assumed he had his usual shit eating grin on his face. 

“Okay, babe, please,” I whined as he kept walking. I’d brought this on myself, me and my big mouth. We were at the lakehouse. We weren’t alone, the kids were somewhere… not our kids, well also kind of our kids. They were a bunch of middle schoolers who Steve babysat. They came along with us to our impromptu graduation party.

“Maybe if I got an apology.” 

“Oh fuck off,” I snapped. 

“Well then-”

“Kids, if you help me I’ll tell you where Steve hid the chocolate pudding!” I yelled, pushing against Steve’s back so I could lift my upper body. He had me slung over one shoulder as he trudged towards the lake with the intent of throwing me in. No sooner was the word “chocolate pudding out of my mouth before I saw Dustin running towards us to rescue me from my watery fate. He grabbed Steve’s free arm and began pulling Steve away from the dock. 

“Hey! Traitor, don’t side with her!” Steve complained, but he kept walking, he was dragging Dustin along too. 

“El!” I screamed desperately as she passed the dock. We were getting closer to the edge and she was my only hope. I spent hours doing my hair, if he threw me in the water it would all be for nothing.

“Don’t you dare,” Steve warned.

“Help me, I know where the Eggos are!” I shrieked as we made it to the end of the dock. Suddenly Steve fell, and I’m not quite sure how or why, but he fell backward, and since I was already pushing myself up, I managed to catch myself before I could hit my face on the dock. Dustin pulled me up so we could escape while Steve was still recovering from his fall. El stood at the other end of the dock. A bit of blood was coming from her nose. 

“Oh, sweetheart you’ve got a nosebleed, come on let’s clean you up.” I placed a hand on her shoulder to lead her back to the lakehouse. I grabbed a paper towel from the kitchen and gave it to her for the time being so she wouldn’t drip on the floor. She simply wiped away the blood and that was the end of it. 

“Eggos?” she asked as I gawked at her now nonexistent nosebleed. 

“Uh, yeah kid. A deal’s a deal.” I turned around and opened the freezer. I dug through the rest of the food and found the Eggos all the way in the back. I gave her the box. 

“Pudding?” Dustin asked. I nodded and pulled his treat out of its hiding spot. I tossed a pudding cup to him. 

“You’re the best,” he ran away, knocking into Steve as he walked into the kitchen. I watched Dustin go, a smile playing at the corners of my mouth. Steve trudged towards me, and I noticed he was wet. 

“Why are you wet?” 

“Mike and Will pushed me in,” he pushed his wet hair back so it would stop dripping on his nose. 

“Oh my God,” I laughed, “Mike, Will come get some pudding, guys!” I yelled outside. 

“Hey don’t reward bad behavior," Steve complained.

“I’m not, I’m rewarding amazing behavior.” 

“It was my idea! I was the distraction,” Lucas yelled as he ran into the house with Mike and Will. 

“Plenty of pudding to go around,” I acknowledged grabbing four more pudding cups and tossing it to each of them, “Here’s an extra one for Max.” 

“Thanks!” They all chimed. I could only smile at them as they ran off to go eat by the lake. As soon as they left Steve pulled me close to him by the belt loops of my shorts. I wore a bikini top, with short shorts over my bikini bottoms, a look that I knew drove Steve wild. 

“You’re such a fucking pest,” he complained resting his forehead against mine. 

“You love me, Steve Harrington,” I grinned, tilting my head up a bit so that our lips touched. He kissed me back for a moment before laughing lightly. 

“Yeah doesn’t mean you’re not a pain in my ass.” 

“There are worse things I could do, Steve. Believe you me.”


End file.
